October 2016

What follows is my contribution to a recent email discussion of “free speech” with a handful of close friends.

It began with one of our group deploring the fact that Professor Jordan Peterson, who teaches psychology at the University of Toronto, is currently under fire for refusing to bend to “ppp” – “personal pronoun pressure” – from students and other faculty members at that lost institution.

There are many benighted folk at U of T who believe that when addressing another, the personal pronoun used to demarcate their gender must conform to the will of the addressee. These people apparently believe that human gender is not determined by God, human biology, procreative function, society, custom, or by anything other than one’s own personal Will, to which they expect society to conform. A boy on campus who for some personal reason fancies himself to be a girl on Monday, may legitimately demand to be addressed as “she”, but if sh/he changes hi/ser mind on Tuesday, may then as adamantly demand that we all revert to “he”, as previously. It’s a new form of speech control.